Even (2 page)

After five minutes another car arrived. It parked carelessly, sticking out from the curb at a lazy angle next to the entrance to the alley. It was another Ford. The same model as the radio car but with plain, dark blue paintwork. It needed a wash. There was a red, flashing beacon on the dashboard. Two men got out without switching it off. They appeared to be in their fifties, and were wearing suits and raincoats with gold shields hanging from their breast pockets. The men moved slowly and deliberately. Both looked a little overweight.

An unmarked, white box van pulled up on the other side of the car. Two men in navy blue overalls jumped down and walked over to join Kaufmann and Klein. As they came closer I could see woven cloth
NYPD
badges on their sleeves. One of them turned back toward their vehicle for a moment, and I read
CRIME SCENE UNIT
in tall white letters on his back.

The technicians started looking into the alley. The guys in suits looked into the car, at me. The taller one came over to my side and peered at me through the glass, like a kid drawn to a repugnant reptile at the zoo. His shield identified him as a detective, but it didn’t give a name. Only a number set into the metal at the top. After twenty seconds of staring he called the others together. Kaufmann and Klein closed their doors so I couldn’t hear what was being said. I watched them talk for a couple of minutes. They were very animated. Then the group moved to the front of the car. I could make out lots of hand movement from the uniformed officers. They kept gesturing and pointing at the body, at me, at things in the alley, and at something out on the street. I couldn’t make out what it was.

The taller detective brought the conference to a close, and the officers
came and got back into the car. Neither of them looked at me. Kaufmann started the engine and backed out into the street. Then the car pitched forward and we sped away from the alley.

And, I thought, away from any more trouble.

Ask me where I live these days, and I’d struggle to find an answer.

I do have an address, obviously, but that doesn’t help much. It would just point you to a half-empty apartment in the Barbican, in London. One bedroom, Cromwell Tower, nearer the top than the bottom. I’ve owned it for years. Bank statements still get sent there, and copies of bills, but that’s about all. I haven’t set foot through the door in seven months. The time before it was fifteen months. Home for me has become a succession of hotel rooms. Different cities, different countries, one after the other, rarely a break in between. Memories of one place blur into the next. That’s been the way for fifteen years now, so I’m comfortable with it. But I still recall the first hotel I ever stayed in. It was in Edinburgh, not long after I left college. I was broke. A soft drinks company was looking for recruits. For sales and marketing. I didn’t know much about either, but the money was good so I gave it a shot. I filled in the forms. Then they invited twenty of us up to their local Holiday Inn so they could pick out the five best candidates. We were there for one night. When I went to check out the next morning, the receptionist asked if I’d enjoyed my stay. I said apart from the work, yes. And I was about to go when I heard someone else being asked the same question. A guy called Gordon, from Cambridge. Only his reply was very different. He wasn’t satisfied at all. His pillows had been too
soft. His towels had been too rough. And worst of all, they’d sent up the wrong kind of honey with his breakfast.

They may have sounded petty, but Gordon’s complaints really unsettled me. I could hardly move my feet to walk away. Each word felt like a sharp finger poking through my skin and gouging at my innards. How had such a shallow little weasel spotted all those flaws when they’d completely passed me by? What was wrong with me?

I mulled over the whole episode on the journey home and eventually the answer came to me. It was actually dead simple. I’d really been aware of it my whole life, in a vague kind of way. Gordon’s bleating had just brought it into focus. It came down to this. What you see depends on what you look for. You can enjoy the positives, or seek out the negatives. It’s your choice.

I’d gone one way, he’d gone the other.

I still take that path, as far as I can. I don’t know about him. Because they didn’t offer me the job.

I love the city at night. I prefer it to the day. The darkness draws out a wider spectrum of people, not just shoppers and office workers. Sounds carry farther. Everything you see feels closer and more personal. And the shadows are never far away, whenever you need them.

Kaufmann drove fast. Neither officer spoke. Away from the alley the streets were still busy. They were full of cars and taxis and limos and vans. A few people were still out walking. There were tall buildings all around, made of brick and stone and glass and concrete. They were squashed in on top of each other, bearing down, connecting you to the darkness up above.

The journey didn’t last long. Less than six minutes. The station house was only a dozen blocks away and Kaufmann took a direct route, basically northwest, toward the Hudson. He stopped outside an eight-story, stone-fronted building midway down a side street. Police cruisers and unmarked sedans were parked at forty-five degrees from the curb, jutting out evenly like fish bones. We joined the end of the row. Klein came
round and opened my door. I shuffled out and he led me to the end of a metal railing that separated the sidewalk from the street. Kaufmann caught up with us and we followed him along to a pair of solid, studded wooden doors at the center of the façade. Big keystones were set all around the doorway and on either side a bright green lantern was hanging on a metal bracket.

Inside, the reception area was small and cramped. It smelled of dust and floor polish, like a school. The walls were painted apple green, which is supposed to be a calming color, and there were notices plastered everywhere. About a quarter showed monochrome photofit images of people the police wanted to question, and the rest gave pedantic warnings about every conceivable petty misdemeanor from smoking in the building to dropping litter in the interview rooms.

Kaufmann approached the reception desk and rested his elbows on the wooden counter. Another uniformed officer emerged from a back room and leaned over to talk to him. The pair of them spoke for a minute. They seemed to know each other. This was probably a familiar ritual. I wouldn’t be the first person Kaufmann had dragged in at the dead of night. Finally the officer behind the desk laughed and slapped Kaufmann on the shoulder. He pressed a button, and a gate in a waist-high glass barrier to our right swung open. Klein ushered me through, then led the way down a flight of stairs that followed around three sides of a square elevator shaft.

The next corridor opened up into a broad square lobby area. The far wall was divided into two sections. The right-hand part was wider. It was made of metal. The surface was painted gray, with large rivets set into it at regular intervals. The remainder was blocked off by dull, dirty white metal bars. The other walls were made of whitewashed stone, and the floor had been covered with some kind of speckled, shiny material. It felt like being in a cellar. The atmosphere was cold and vaguely damp. There were only three windows. They were long and narrow, set high up in the left-hand wall. All were closed. It didn’t look as if they could be opened. There were no handles, and they were covered by thick metal bars.

A uniformed officer sat behind a battered wooden desk to our right.
He was hunched over, concentrating on a computer screen. His badge gave the name
JACKMAN
. When he saw us he pushed the mouse away and stood up.

“Evening, fellas,” he said. “What have you got for me?”

“Just this one guy,” Kaufmann said. “Collar off a homicide on Mulberry Street.”

“You’re in luck, then. Got one vacancy left. Who caught the case?”

“Don’t know. Norman and Johns were at the scene. Said they’d be leaving it for the day tour.”

“No problem. I’ll find out later. What’s the guy’s name?”

“Don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”

“OK then—let’s have a look at him.”

Jackman took a shiny metal dish from a filing cabinet behind him and came around to our side of the desk. He worked his way methodically through my pockets and put each piece of my property in turn into the dish. He ended up with eighty cents in change, eighteen dollars in bills, and the card key from my hotel. He added my watch to the pile. It still didn’t look like much. Jackman stood and studied the dish, gently stirring the contents with his stubby index finger as if weighing up whether there was enough for a bona fide citizen to be carrying. After a moment he frowned, put the dish back down on the desk, and searched me all over again. He pinched his fingers along the seams of my clothes, squeezed the edges of my collar, and inspected the inside of my boots. It was a much more thorough job than Klein had done in the alley, but it turned up nothing more.

Jackman took the dish over to the other side of the desk and tipped the contents into a clear plastic bag. It was twelve inches tall by eight wide. Large enough for a gun or a knife. No wonder he seemed so disappointed with my sorry collection. He sealed the top, and held it up to the light as if to emphasize how little my possessions amounted to. Then he stuck a label on the bag and dropped it into the top drawer of the cabinet. Without looking he nudged the drawer with his elbow, and while it was still grinding slowly back into place on its worn runners he made his way around to the bars.

Klein took his gun out of its holster and laid it on the corner of the desk. Then he grabbed my elbow and pushed me forward. Jackman took a bunch of keys from his belt. They were large and heavy, something you might imagine a medieval jailer would use. He unlocked the center section of bars and swung them open. They hinged outward, toward us. Klein shoved me through the gap. Jackman followed him, then pulled the gate back into place and made sure it was secure.

The wall to the left was blank. So was the one at the far end. To the right was a row of cells. There were five. They were identical. The front walls were made of bars. There was a gate in the center of each, all with a heavy lock. The sides were gray metal, three inches thick, filled with broad rivet heads. I realized the panel you could see from the lobby was the outside of the first cell. The rear walls were whitewashed stone. They were all covered in graffiti. It was scratched, rather than written or painted. A pair of benches ran parallel with the side walls. They were made of metal and had been bolted to the floor. The only other item in each cell was a toilet. The bowls stuck out from the rear wall. They were also made of metal—stainless steel—and none of them had a seat.

Klein led me past the first four cells. They were all occupied. There was a single person in the one nearest the lobby. A young guy. He had stained, shapeless clothes, lank greasy hair, and sunken features. He was standing hunched over near the toilet, looking wide-eyed and confused. There were five people in the second cell and four in each of the next two, but I could see the door to the last one in the row was standing open. It was folded back on itself, flush with the bars. When we reached it Klein let go of my arm. Jackman took over. He pushed me into the cell, and kept going until my shins were touching the toilet bowl. My nose told me it was a while since anyone had cleaned it.

“Look straight at the wall,” he said. “Now, keep looking at it. When I uncuff your left wrist, immediately put your hand on top of your head. Do the same when I uncuff your right wrist. Understand?”

I didn’t reply, but he released my wrists anyway.

“Good,” he said. “Now, stand still. Do not move until you hear me close the cell door. Understand?”

I listened to his footsteps retreat across the cell floor. It sounded as though he were walking backward. He stopped, and the door slammed shut, squealing on its hinges as it was dragged through 180 degrees. I heard the keys jangle as he worked the lock, and then two sets of footsteps receded down the corridor.

The graffiti in my cell was fascinating. It covered every inch of stone from floor to ceiling. People must have stood on the benches and even the toilet to find space. I saw people’s names, gang names, sports teams, including one English soccer club, political slogans, insults about the police, opinions of rock bands and movie stars. But mainly obscenities. And for some reason those were mostly in clumsy attempts at rhyming couplets, so they really made no sense at all.

I gave it a couple more minutes, then picked a spot on one of the benches and tried to get some rest. It wasn’t easy. The giant rivets kept digging into my spine and shoulder blades so I had to slide my back to and fro along the wall until I found a comfortable position. But even then, wherever I looked in that narrow space my eyes couldn’t avoid settling on one cold, hard object or another. The toilet, the other bench, the bars, the floor, the walls. This was definitely not what I’d had in mind for my last night in New York. I’d worked hard. I’d done a good job. I deserved a night to myself. But on the other hand, if the last few days had worked out even a whisker differently, I might not have had any time left to spend anywhere. Maybe this was just fate balancing the scales a little.

Without consciously intending to, my hand moved up to touch the back of my head. It was still sore. Two nights ago someone I was working with made a mistake. It was their miscalculation, but I was the one to pay the price. A piece of flying glass had cut me. A big piece. It had sliced my skin, right through to the bone. So I had to admit, annoying as the situation was, things could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t as if I’d never been locked up before. It comes with the territory. As cells go, this one wasn’t too bad. It was a bit small maybe, and pretty spartan, but relatively clean. And I was in there on my own. There’s nothing worse than being crammed in with a horde of unwashed lowlifes, spewing out their
foul breath and trampling on your feet. Plus, I wouldn’t be in there long. Not like the hopeless cases you normally find in these places. Sad, desperate people clinging to the fruitless fantasy they weren’t going to spend the rest of their lives in jail. For me, clearly, it was only a temporary problem. A bump in the road. Nothing more.